What would it mean for your bottom line if you were able to build a team of 10, 50, 100, 1000 sales reps, for free? Imagine if each of those sales reps had a strong influence on the opinions and purchase behaviors of your ideal customer. Sounds too good to be true – passive traffic, leads, sales and revenue, on complete autopilot? Maybe not.The Power Of Brand AdvocatesThese folks are your most highly satisfied clients who share positive information about your products and services without being asked or paid to do so. They influence 20-50% of all purchases and generate over $6 trillion in consumer spending each year. Despite the value they bring to any business, there is a tremendous advocacy gap that exists today. In the US, 80% of companies are not leveraging advocates in their marketing campaigns, and worse, 58% don’t even know who their advocates are.

If you are going to help make your organization a World-Class Customer service organization, you must have a consistently great outlook. You must see opportunities where most do not. You must believe in the present and future. You must have charitable assumption of your Customers and confidence in your existing and future generation of employees. Too often, I come across people in management that have an extremely negative outlook on our world today, which tells me they and their businesses will be limited.

When You Sound Old You Become Old

Have you been guilty of criticizing the younger generation for not having the work ethic your generation had, or their poor people skills because of texting and social media, or complained about how bad our politicians are today? Have you vented over the unpredictability of the economy, how more businesses are in danger of going under, how negative people have become towards each other, or how scary the world is today with all the threats of terrorism?

Bain & Company, a business-consulting firm, asked leaders of 362 companies if they felt their companies delivered superior customer service. 80 percent believe that the service they provided was indeed superior. What these companies didn’t know was at the same time, Bain & Co. was surveying over 3,000 customers, asking them if they felt they received superior customer service. Only 8 percent of customers surveyed described their experience as superior. How can 80 percent of the companies think they are providing superior service, but only 8 percent of their customers agree with them? Who’s right?

A few weeks ago the CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, apologized for cultural failings at his company after a former employee alleged she was harassed and discriminated against while working there. Is it too late for the company that revolutionized public transportation? Kalanick apologized for a lack of diversity in the company’s workforce and for not properly responding to employee complaints. Uber & Kalanick are no stranger to public controversy. Last month, the #deleteuber movement came about after customers accused Uber of breaking a New York taxi drivers’ strike and allying itself with President Donald Trump. Then this past weekend, former software developer Susan Fowler wrote a blog post alleging that she’d been sexually harassed during her year at Uber and that the company’s HR department had tried to protect her manager, rather than resolve the situation. In a February 2014 GQ profile, Kalanick said people referred to the company as “Boob-er” because it helped him attract women. A few months later, Uber employees in France offered riders a chance to be driven by “sexy girls.”

1.Executive sponsorship – It is a proven fact that any big initiative, project, or revolution has to have the support of the senior leadership team; otherwise it will be considered “flavor of the month” or “management by bestseller.”

2.No one losing sleep at night over the CX – Over the last several years, one of the most often discussed topics continues to be, who is in charge of your brand’s customer? I am not talking about your call center, customer service reps, or customer support. Regardless of your company’s size, or business model, someone in your organization has to be in charge of the customer experience and all that goes with it.

By now you have probably seen the Oscar screw-up in which Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway where given the wrong envelope and falsely announced that “La La Land” had won the Academy Award for best picture. It was a very unfortunate mistake, one I think the majority of the public felt bad about and understood that mistakes happen (Steve Harvey was forgiven for his similar screw-up at the Miss Universe 2015 pageant).

Forget about 2017, to guarantee growth and survival, you better be working on what your 2022 Customer Experience model will evolve to. If you haven’t started working on the innovation of your future experience, you are in danger of being a passenger or even worse road kill. Why is this important, because every so often, a product or service comes along that can eliminate other products all together. Worse yet, there are even some examples of one single product eliminating entire industries.